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Mixed Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable mix flavored with mustard, flour, vinegar, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mixed Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the green tomatoes, cauliflower, pickling onions, and green peppers into pieces.

  2. Combine the vegetables in a brine made of 1 cup salt and 3 cups water.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook and dress

  1. In the morning, cook the vegetables in the brine until tender.

  2. Drain the cooked vegetables.

  3. In a separate pot, mix together 1 cup ground yellow mustard, 1 cup flour, 1 pint vinegar, and 2 cups brown sugar.

  4. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  5. Pour the thickened mixture over the pickles.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it coats the vegetables.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them tang.
Ground yellow mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor of the sauce.
Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and hold their shape during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the mustard sauce until it thickens. Flour must be fully boiled to cook out its raw starch taste and to thicken properly; undercooked flour leaves the sauce pasty and floury, and it needs steady stirring so it does not scorch or lump.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, onion, pepper, mustard, flour, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, onion, pepper, mustard, flour, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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